Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote

a favorite source of intuitions concerning the ontological status of a literary work of art. Many philosophers are convinced that Borges has shown in this piece of fiction how two different literary artworks can share the same text, therewith offering support to the view that works are not texts. However, a debate has emerged recently concern-ing the ability of this story to support such view. In this paper, after reviewing the reasons backing the two positions, I take a skeptical ap-proach to Menard’s alleged accomplishment. I argue that there is noth-ing in Borges ’ story to favor the possible existence of a pair of works having an identical text. In fact, I suggest that if there is something that one can infer from the tale, it is the conceptual impossibility of projects like Menard’s. 1. Two works and one text: the anti–textualist use of Menard’s Don Quixote What a literary artwork is and what sort of relation it has with a text, an author and an audience are central questions for a philosophy of literary objects. Arthur Danto has offered a well–known answer to these questions by defending a theory based on the place of interpreta-tion in our ontology and epistemology of artworks. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, where Danto first called at-tention to Borges ’ contribution to the ontology of art, Danto argued against the thesis that a literary work is identical to its text. According to Danto, such thesis, also known as “textualism”, was shown to be false by Borges ’ story “Pierre Menard autor del Quijote”. In this story we are confronted with a conceptually possible scenario where two dif-ferent literary works share a single text. Pierre Menard, a fictitious French writer of the turn of the century, is shown as intending and suc-ceeding in writing a work which has the very same text as the famou